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Clara and Amelia stumbled up the path carrying the boxes that Nora, in her great excitement, had forgotten to help with.
“I’m exhausted!” Clara exclaimed, “I can’t wait to sit inside a cool house with a good air conditioner. The one in the car is beyond screwed up.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Charles crossed her arms uncertainly, her friendly brown eyes worried, “Well, there’s just one little hiccup. There isn’t any air conditioning in the house.”
“What?” Amelia demanded, hastily dropping the box she carried.
“Well, the house is so old they never put it in. But we’ll buy some nice fans in town, and when the windows are open we’ll get great cross ventilation,” Mrs. Charles offered.
Amelia gazed contemptuously at the blue and pink house, “What a dump. Can’t we just knock it down? Build a new one?”
Nora gasped in horror, “KNOCK IT DOWN? That house is over 100 years old, you just don’t go knocking down historic…”
“I don’t care, I just want to take a shower and get clean,” Clara interrupted calmly.
“Yeah, me too,” Amelia agreed as she stuck her tongue out at Nora and wiped sweat off her glistening forehead, “I still say we should knock this house down and start over. We can start right after my shower; I’ll get the hammer out of the car.”
Mrs. Charles shook her head sternly, “We’re not ‘knocking it down.’ It’s a fine old house, just needs some work. And there’s another hiccup. One of you will have to wait your turn for a shower.”
Clara laughed, “Why? Don’t tell me there’s just one bathroom.”
Mrs. Charles nodded slowly.
“ONE BATHROOM!” yelled Amelia.
Clara and Amelia turned, glared at each other, and raced through the screen door. Nora squinted her eyes as she heard them crashing upstairs.
“I called the shower first!” Clara yelled.
“Bite me!” Amelia shouted back.
Mrs. Charles gazed to the heavens for patience, and then turned her attention on her youngest daughter. She touched Nora’s left earring, a gold hoop, and then examined the chandelier earring hanging from her right ear, "Sweets, why don’t you wear a pair of earrings that match? Or maybe change out of all these black clothes;" she pulled at Nora's black shirt, "you would look so pretty in something pink, or lavender."
Nora gritted her teeth stubbornly, "I like my earrings this way, and black clothes are easy. I don’t have to match anything, and Amelia doesn’t try to borrow my clothes," she paused for emphasis,” and no pink. Not now. Not ever."
Mrs. Charles, a woman well versed in experience with Nora’s quirks, shrugged her shoulders lightly, “Oh well, it’s just a suggestion.”
There was a resolute thud on the ceiling above them as they entered the house, which notified them that Fat George had awoken from a nap and was coming to greet them. He skidded down the stairs and past a stack of boxes, howling greetings of affection to Nora. Fat George wanted three things in life, and made no secret of them; constant attention, lots of food, and the right to nap on any piece of furniture in the house.
Mrs. Charles excitedly showed Nora the original chandelier in the pink dining room, the black marble fireplace in the living room, and the giant butler’s pantry beside the kitchen.
“I’m so glad you like it, Nora. I hope your sisters will come around,” Mrs. Charles sighed.
“They have to! This place is just too awesome,” Nora assured as she inspected the crystal sconces above the fireplace. She smiled, noticing that her mom seemed happier than she had seen her in a long time, “You’re really excited about your new job, aren’t you?”
“I really am,” Mrs. Charles nodded, “I start on the planning for the Halloween Ball soon, and the hotel is just breathtaking.”
Years ago, Charlotte Charles gave up the idea of being a famous artist. She started doing what she did second best, smoothing over ruffled feathers. She found her way into the hospitality profession in a large city hotel, which made her a shoo-in for her job at the Star Hotel.
The Star Hotel rested at the very top of the mountain, serenely positioned above the town. Originally built as a girl’s school, it was later remodeled into a hotel. She loomed with her stone walls and balconies, a castle. The lawns sprawling around her were something from another era, full of gazebos and flower gardens. Guests still played Croquet during the summer. It was there, at the Star Hotel, where Mr. and Mrs. Charles fell in love.
As a young woman, Mrs. Charles had been a true hippy. Nora loved the pictures in their old scrapbooks; her mother’s long mouse brown hair flowing, paint brush in her hand. She was part of a generation who ran away from their middle class upbringings and the neat orderly suburbs of their parents. The town surged, full of flower children and transplants from far off places like San Francisco and Seattle. Amid this bustle, Nora’s parents met.
Walter was not a hippy. As a construction worker, he was called in to work on the renovation of the Star Hotel. Walter was strong and possessed a big sense of humor. Nora’s favorite picture of her father was one taken of the construction workers in front of the hotel, his mouth curling in that familiar smile, the hotel looming mysteriously in the background. Nora loved that picture, but it made her terribly sad when she looked at it. The man in that picture was not supposed to die; he was young and strong. But he had. Walter Charles died and left his girls behind. All three sisters knew their move to Cold Springs revolved around Mrs. Charles going back to the place where she had met their father. None of them had questioned her in that.
“I have a surprise for you,” Mrs. Charles reached into her purse and pulled out three tickets, her brown eyes smiling warmly.
“What’re those?” Nora asked suspiciously. The last time she had been presented with tickets, she had been forced to endure two hours at the Ice Capades with an elderly next door neighbor named Gertrude who smelled strongly of mint and mothballs.
“There’s a traveling circus here in town. I know you’ve wanted to go to one for a while now, and I figured it might let you girls relax after such a long trip,” Mrs. Charles waved the tickets in front of Nora.
Nora took them slowly, “You don’t want our help unpacking?”
Mrs. Charles shook her head, “You can help when you get back, but if you get your sisters out of this house, you’ll be doing me a huge favor. I need some peace and quiet right now.”
Upstairs, Clara let out a shriek of protest, “Gimme back my lip gloss, you cow!”
Nora’s List
The red and white tents fluttered loudly in the breeze as the girls entered the gate of the circus. Barred carts filled with lions and men carrying whips lined the walkway. Nora inhaled deeply the lovely smell of wispy cotton candy. Two tiny women with purple spandex suits smiled at the girls as they walked past, and a man with a black top hat saluted her from his booth that read, “See the last of the Swinging Tree Top Men.” Somewhere in a nearby tent she could hear a cabaret performer’s alto voice lilting the song, “Je Cherche un Homme.” Nora knew this because of her mother’s monstrous collection of Eartha Kitt records.
“Amelia, for the last time, your lipstick looks fine.” Clara remarked as she sipped lemonade.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, Clara,” Amelia retorted as she concentrated on applying a second red layer to her lips, “You have to work at being beautiful.”
“You couldn’t find Rome on a map,” Nora sniped, bumping Amelia with her shoulder. Amelia’s arm jerked and a big streak of red lipstick coated her left cheek.
Amelia closed her eyes slowly, “Don’t EVER touch me while I’m applying my makeup!”
Nora snickered, “Sorry. Accident.” Clara eyed her knowingly and Nora shrugged. As the youngest of the family, she took her shots when she could get them.
“Why are we here again?” demanded Clara as she stepped quickly to avoid a giant pile of animal excrement.
“Because Mom wants you two banshees out of the house, and because this is on my List,” Nora replied distractedly as she gazed into a nearby cage where a large black bear wore a red felt hat.
Clara peered at her, her short dark hair falling prettily just below her ears, “What List?”
“I am so BORED here,” Amelia insisted as she wiped the last of the lipstick from her cheek. She patted the top of her giant curly hair.
“Your hair’s as big as ever,” Nora noted dryly.
“Just because you two have absolutely no interest in making yourself look better doesn’t give you the right to be jealous of my fabulousness,” Amelia sniffed indignantly.
“What kind of List do you have?” Clara questioned again.
Nora didn’t have a chance to respond before Amelia intercepted, “10 things to do in her lifetime, blah blah blah.”
“That’s kind of cool,” Clara said admiringly, “I’ve never even considered making a List.”
Nora shrugged nonchalantly, “I’ve wanted to ride an elephant ever since I watched the movie Dumbo, so I put it on my List.”
“Correction,” Amelia stated, “you mean since you bawled your eyes out watching the movie Dumbo.”
Nora tossed her mismatched earrings defiantly, “It’s sad, ok! Especially when he can’t get to his mother and she stretches her trunk out the barred window. Besides, you cried too!”
“I’ve NEVER cried over a cartoon!” Amelia insisted.
“Oh yeah, you’re right, I forgot. It was Bambi that made you ball like a baby,” Nora poked.
“Well, I think this is exciting,” Clara decided, “you can cross something off your List and you’ll only have nine more things.”
“Then I can start trying to figure out how to rent a ski boat in Venice,” Nora muttered under her breath.
The girls reached the elephant tent and stood at the back of the line. The sign above the entrance read, “Ride One of Nature’s Most Beautiful Beasts: $5 per person.”
“So what else is on the List?” Clara asked.
Nora crossed her arms, “It’s private.”
“Private?” Clara miffed, “What could you possibly want to keep private from us?
“Don’t be insulting,” Nora stated seriously, “I have plenty of things going on that you two don’t know about.”
Amelia smiled as her eyes narrowed, “Well, not that private. We all know about your sacred first kiss with Clay Fitzgerald.”
Nora’s mouth dropped open as the blood left her face. She guarded her few precious secrets with absolute ferocity, and this was unthinkable. The calamity of the moment left her sputtering, “What? How…”
Clara snorted into her hand as Amelia shrugged, “I always listened in on the upstairs phone. Seriously, you couldn’t hear the click when I picked up? You are dense. What did you say, oh yes, I believe you said he was a ‘soulful kisser.’”
Nora seethed through her teeth, imagining all possible methods of retaliation. They flashed through her mind quickly until she settled on the tried and true ‘drop Amelia’s toothbrush in the toilet’ plan. But her anger still surged, “You catty, shallow, trashy little…”
“OK,” Clara clasped her hand over Nora’s mouth, “Can you guys chill out already? We haven’t been in this town more than 2 hours. I would REALLY like to avoid a Jerry Springer moment here in public.”
Amelia rolled her eyes and Nora sniffed loudly.
“OK?” Clara demanded louder.
Nora shrugged and looked away, “Whatever. New town, same old crap.”
The girls stood in silence, shifting from one leg to another. The crowd was dense and the heat came in waves, the subtle aroma of elephant dung wafting through the air.
Amelia fanned herself and shifted huffily as a small boy behind her swayed his ice cream cone dangerously close to her hand bag.
“That thing,” she informed him as she pointed to his ice cream, “better not come any closer to this Italian leather purse.”
Unimpressed, the small boy stuck his tongue out and kicked a pebble at her feet.
Nora leaned down closer to the boy, attempting to divert a full scale confrontation, “Hey, my shallow sister is pretty crabby today. Could you keep that ice cream away from her purse?”
“That’s not your sister,” ice cream boy responded through lowered, unconcerned lids.
“Yes, she is, actually,” Nora rubbed her temples, exhausted from dealing with mentally inferior beings.
“No she isn’t,” ice cream boy responded, “sisters look like each other. You don’t.”
Nora blinked, realizing the annoying boy had made an astute observation. The Charles sisters’ appearances were, in fact, totally different.
Clara was brunette, petite and always determined. She had withdrawn from college and moved with the family to Cold Springs, but planned on attending the local community college. Amelia couldn’t understand why Clara didn’t stay at the university with all her sorority sisters and friends. Nora understood. Clara didn’t want her family to leave her behind.
Amelia was the middle child at age 17, but no one could tell. She was taller than Clara, but not quite as tall as Nora. She had great piles of spiraling yellow hair and grey eyes. Amelia was strong, took charge, and was often, as she put it, wrongly persecuted because of her good looks.
Nora was the youngest at 16, but the tallest of the three girls. With her long sandy hair and graceful limbs, she was often encouraged to take ballet. But Nora, in her literary disdain, did not consider these comments complements. She fantasized about being a writer, despite that fact that Amelia called the last story she’d written a ‘suck fest.’
Nora blinked, adjusting her glasses determinedly, “Yeah, well just hold onto your ice-cream and be cool. Ok?”
“You’re not the boss of me,” ice cream boy retorted and moved defiantly close to Amelia’s purse.
Clara pushed Nora to one side and pointed her finger at ice cream boy, “If you don’t keep that to yourself, I’m going to take it away and feed it AND you to the elephants.”
Ice cream boy squinted, calculated the situation, and moved his ice cream cone sullenly to the side. The man in charge of the elephants wore a train conductor’s hat and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention.
“I’ll be starting the rides now,” Conductor shouted in an English accent, “I’ll take four people at a time.”
Nora frowned, “I thought I’d get to ride by myself.”
Conductor began pointing, “Alright, I’ll take the boy in the red hat, the girl with the teddy bear, the boy with the ice cream cone, and you, there, Stretch.”
Nora stared at the man as he obviously meant her, hating the fact that he publicly called attention to her height. She then stared at the three small children she would be accompanying on her much anticipated elephant ride.
Ice cream boy glared at her and shoved his way to the front, “Why does she get to ride? She’s old.”
Nora could hear her sisters snickering behind her as she stepped forward, “Excuse me, sir?”
“Yeah?” he responded, distractedly helping the children mount an elephant adorned in red jewels and paint.
“Um, I thought we would get to ride by ourselves,” Nora questioned, hoping for a reprieve.
“Nope girlie,” Conductor shook his head, “you’ll have to ride like all the other kiddies. Now do you want on or not?”
Deep frown lines creased Nora’s brow, “I guess so.”
“Good, then load up,” he pointed for her to climb up on the platform where the elephant waited patiently.
Somewhere in the crowd, Nora could hear Amelia mimic a baseball announcer, “And the elephant takes his life in his own hands ladies and gentleman, attempting to lift the biggest child of them all.”
She felt the hot heat of embarrassment and frustration on her face as she struggled to climb and situate herself in a dignified manner behind the three small children.
“Ok,” Conductor said, “now I’m going to lead Franklin around the circle four times and then we’ll take the next group.”
Nora situated herself, tall and high above her sisters, Franklin the elephant, and three children. She felt like a lightening rod and stiffly tried to maintain her dignity without slumping. She gazed over the crowd, ignoring the fact that her sisters were pointing and laughing, and noticed an odd crowd gathering at the back of the tent. There were several dark figures clustered by themselves, hooded and quiet in the active crowd. No one else seemed to notice them.
They wore beautiful robes, embroidered and glittering in dark colors. Their heads were covered in hoods, but the tallest figure wore a large purple hat. Nora squinted, but somehow despite the lighting in the tent, couldn’t quite make out what their faces looked like.
The tallest of the figures turned slowly toward her, and Nora flinched. Beneath the large hat was only darkness, the face completely shielded from the light. But amid the shadows, Nora could see a pair of electric blue eyes. Despite the heat, a little shiver ran up her spine.
“Gross!” the little girl riding in front cried out, “Don’t put your ice cream on me!”
Ice cream boy snickered rudely, “Cry baby.”
They began to scuffle, and much to Nora’s horror, she felt Franklin’s giant saddle shift, “Knock it off!”
Ice cream boy glared at her and took a large defiant lick of ice cream.
Nora returned her gaze toward the crowd, but the hooded figures were gone. After an awkward dismount from Franklin, she scanned the crowd for the hooded group, but finding no sign of them, she distracted herself with a funnel cake. The girls headed homeward, climbing through the narrow snake-like streets.
“Ok, let’s see the List,” Clara commanded as she snatched a piece of Nora’s funnel cake, popping it into her mouth.
“What List?” Nora scowled, opening the front door and carefully shielding her food. Taking food without asking was grounds for assault in the Charles household.
“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about,” Clara answered.
“Yeah, let us look at it,” Amelia agreed as she leaned against the railing of the stairwell.
“Well I don’t have it on me,” Nora replied, incensed at being pressed on the subject.
“Go get it,” Amelia demanded.
“Forget it!” Nora railed, refusing to be bullied.
“I’ll bet it’s on her desk, in that leather notebook. You know the one she won’t let anyone look at?” Clara suggested, her hazel eyes glinting a devious yellow at Amelia, “What do you think?”
Amelia needed no further encouragement and leapt up the stairs two at a time.
“HEY!” Nora shouted, dropping her food and hurling herself after Amelia. She swiped at Amelia’s running feet, but instead fell flat onto the stairs. “Ow ow ow,” she yelled angrily and exploded into her room, but not before Amelia clutched her precious List.
Amelia read aloud as Clara arrived, lounging in the doorway, “I, Nora Charles, on this date, do choose to enumerate my heart’s dearest ambitions.”
“Enumerate huh? Whoa, little sis uses big words now,” Clara clucked.
“Give it back, you butthole!” Nora roared and pushed aside a stack of boxes, charging for Amelia.
Amelia calmly held her at bay with a hand placed securely on Nora’s forehead, “Item number 1. I will ride an elephant down the streets of Bombay.”
Nora jerked away and slouched on her desk chair, scorched with flames of injustice. She glared daggers at her older sisters, knowing it was her own stupid fault for letting her guard down, but it had been several months since they had banded together in an effort to give her a stroke. She hated it when she forgot what monsters they could be.
“I don’t know if riding a circus elephant counts,” Clara baited.
“It’s close enough, it counts,” Nora growled, her arms crossed and her face dark with bitter gall.
“Item number 2. In my lifetime, I will thwart a villain,” Amelia paused, confused, “Wait, what?”
“Thwart a…,” Clara snorted in spasms of laughter, “villain?”
“What does thwart mean?” Amelia asked in wonderment.
Nora put her head in her hands, completely humiliated.
Clara recovered slightly, “It means to stop a villain, like a bad guy in a movie. Nora, what in the world?”
Amelia, late coming to the joke, cackled and screeched, “What a giant dork! Nobody says things like that.”
Nora sprung to her own defense, “I’ve been keeping this list since I was ten years old, OK? I’d been reading a lot of fairy tales! Give me a break!”
“Was that when you were in that phase of pretending to slay a dragon in the backyard with Mom’s garden rake?” Clara asked, huge gales of laughter just waiting to explode past her smile.
“Or maybe it was the phase where you declared yourself sheriff of the neighborhood and tried to put Bobby Thomas in those stocks you built with Dad’s weight equipment?” Amelia razzed.
“Just give it back!” Nora yelled. She leapt across the room and plucked her List from Amelia’s hand, “Get out! Seriously!”
Clara and Amelia wheezed with laughter as they exited her room. Nora stomped back to her desk, clutching her List tightly. No one truly understood her pain, she fumed. Being the youngest with two older sisters was a torturous experience at best. She could never be quite sure when they would attack. One instant they were her best friends, treating her as a contemporary, and the next, Amelia was spraying her with a water gun and telling everyone Nora peed her pants.
She puffed indignantly and surveyed the room for a place to hide her precious List.
